Among many things I fancy in a place, is its way of unfolding onto the senses beholder, not so much its ferocity as the eventuality with which it seems to manage it. This is true of all civilizations even more so for a country like ours, breathing the present with its lungs of the past. A perfect example of this unfolding of frozen moments to my knowledge is Dilli ('Delhi' just doesn't cut it.). I say so because I have never imagined life beyond the confines of this city, I've been told I should get out more often.Regional perceptions aside, to me Dilli is the one place that has woven this perfect imperfection of humanity in its very soil and heart. Sure many other cities make others weak in their knees but unlike any city, my 'love' for this place grew out of sheer hatred whilst growing up. And this is exactly why I cant imagine any other city winning me over.
We are all filled with an unexplained void. Moments forgotten or remembered are the ways we fill that void.
Not to say that we are morbid creatures of nature but our intellectual providence provides us with an enhanced capacity for finding a semblance of meaning in things and events. I think it is in our nature to prove to our very selves that we are always on the verge of becoming whole again.
Perhaps like we were in the womb. Perfect and Content.
We are complete as of this moment, even the moment after a decade in the calender has gone by We shall be complete. I, you, me, us. It is our association with our past moments stringed together, forming a sequence that keeps us gazing at the future ones to come, hoping that when it does it will make us whole. This future, the one that keeps coming at you while you gaze into it, is the freezing up in the face of imminent collision.
In this way a city goes well by painting us a fluidic picture of its past, present and future. Time then becomes a living, breathing entity. Dilli has been blessed with more than it ever wanted. The mughals are alive in the baolis, the mausoleums, jama masjid, the museums tell the tales of many others, the posters on the walls of paharganj, the ornate arches over the balconies of Sisganj Gurudwara, The 'Delhi' of Lutyen's included. The stains of paan by the street, the damp ceiling that somehow turns a blank wall into a masterpiece, the droplets of rain that syncronize with the wind to fall on my face as i walk out onto the balcony, the birds that choose to rest on top of the overhead cables and thereby painting the car below.
The harmony with which atoms upon atoms of wheat flour, clarified butter, and salt decide to get commune to form the best shape for a parantha and the immense precision with which heat catalyzes it. In our primitive context, in our evolutionary past, this was our miracle, humanity's biggest achievement till date. In that moment, we are the same as the first human who bit into the cooked food, that gave him, through energy a rush that transcended human technology and evolution, that of being.
In fact have we evolved at all?
Dilli has more such ways of uniting me with my ancestors, every nook, every chaos in every corner screams out saying, "Time is neither here nor there for you to access, its never beyond reach." Superfluous within and without prejudice. Welcoming, yet petrifying for the same reasons.
Sure we can talk of the passage of time, but we still can't quantify its existence, we talk of atoms and electrons because it helps us get our head around this anomaly. We still cant say what the difference is between a second after this second and the billionth of a second thereafter.
We slice n dice the very fabric of this flow, one without a cross-section to see.
It is unquantifiable to us, confirmed by its absence between one moment and the next, because we want to find patterns to our existence and make sense.
That void we love to fill is not time's dejection or dereliction of its so called duty towards us, it is its way of completing us.
We know and talk of time as we confide in it, store our moments in an order in a locker of the past and sit with the present to sort out the puzzle of future on the table.
